Breaking a lease (12 months) questions and information inside!

rullarn

Hey all,

a friend at work directed me to this site

So here's the deal,
10th of august, I moved to Dublin from Sweden.
I managed to get a house with three other swedish guys starting the same job as me. All great and fine then.

So after about two months in the house we all started to get tierd of it, we were sick 24/7 and no heating and general state of the house.

And so we all wanted to move, and most have done that at the moment.
I moved to Swords and so did another, one moved in with his girlfriend and also one moved to america

So we told our landlord that we wanted to break the lease.
Here is a pharaphrasing of the text,

Me:
Hi ****,
We wanted to know what you need from us if we want to move out as fast as possible.

Landlord:
I pressume you know you have a legal tenancy for 12 months

Me:
Yes we do, but we should be able to break it somehow?

Landlord:
When you took the place we had several interrested groups, now it's harder to find tenants.
But if you find someone that I approve then you can move out.

And this to me sounds more or less that his to lazy to do it himself.

The other nice thing is that we never received a copy of the contract, so we are unable to check what it says.

FOR EXAMPLE:
the new house I live in with two guys, on the contract it says specific,
"If the tenant wish to move out before lease period the deposit is non-refundable"

And this to all of us is okey, that he keeps our deposit.

So as it stands now, 3 are paying rent for a house they no longer live in while paying for the one they are living in, and one is in america paying rent for something he will never come back to.

What can we do?
Any ideas?
We were thinking of just stop paying rent(And that idea I don't like at all, but I'm still open for it).

I can only compare this to sweden were we have no leases and a 3 months notice for moving out.
And I love Ireland, but to be honest this system as my landlord has me to belive, IS ****.

Any help would be great!

Thanks in advance,
A swedish turned irish

Giblet

Did you sign a lease? You should have a copy and your tenancy should be registered with the PRTB, if not the landlord could be in trouble. If the heating doesn't work, it's the landlords responsibility to fix it. If he doesn't you have grounds to move.

I wouldn't just stop paying though, could land you in trouble if the landlord has his affairs in order.

rullarn

Giblet wrote: »

Did you sign a lease? You should have a copy and your tenancy should be registered with the PRTB, if not the landlord could be in trouble. If the heating doesn't work, it's the landlords responsibility to fix it. If he doesn't you have grounds to move.

I wouldn't just stop paying though, could land you in trouble if the landlord has his affairs in order.

Thanks for a quick reply!

Yea, we signed a contract for the house. But we never recieved a copy of the contract, so i'm unable to actually look at it.

I know were in the ****ter with this issue, but I feel that in someway there should be a way out!

CiaranC

Why would you sign something you werent given a copy of? Was it a lease or wasnt it?

rullarn

CiaranC wrote: »

Why would you sign something you werent given a copy of? Was it a lease or wasnt it?

mostly due to him telling us we would get a copy of it, and seeing we were new in the country and in need of place to live, we might have not thinken to far ahead.
Yes, it's a 12 month's.

therfore he said "I pressume you know you have a legal tenancy for 12 months"

snubbleste

You mention there is no heating in the house? is this so?

silja

Technically, you are on the hook for the full 12 months. A contract is a contract, though you should request a copy of it asap.

Realistically, you may have two ways out:
- Did you bring up the heating issue with the landlord? What, if anything, did he do about it? Having no heating makes the house un-inhabitable, and you may be able to break the lease due to this.
- If you provide tenants to take-over your lease, the landlord must give deposit back.

rullarn

snubbleste wrote: »

You mention there is no heating in the house? is this so?

Downstairs we have to electric radiators, one works KINDA it's not heating anything up. The one in the kitchen is dead.
And the bathroom has no heating at all, when I lived there every morning I woke up with moist and damp on the window.

That's one of the main reason I just got the hell outta there as fast as I could

rullarn

silja wrote: »

Technically, you are on the hook for the full 12 months. A contract is a contract, though you should request a copy of it asap.

Realistically, you may have two ways out:
- Did you bring up the heating issue with the landlord? What, if anything, did he do about it? Having no heating makes the house un-inhabitable, and you may be able to break the lease due to this.
- If you provide tenants to take-over your lease, the landlord must give deposit back.

I'm aware that a contract is a contract, but feels wicked wierd to have someone rent something, and not allowing them to "stop renting" it.
This for me goes for anything :P

samething is as with sweden, we have contracts for our apartments\houses, but we as tenants are still allowed to move out without having to find someone to take over.
We have a notice period of 3 months

Coprophagous

Most tenancies in Ireland are fixed term , 6 or 12 months. It could be worse, on the continent e.g. Germany or France, multi-year fixed term contracts are not unusual.

If the heating is bust, you should get in touch with the landlord. If he doesn't get it sorted, ring up threshold and ask for advice on how to proceed.

convert

If you signed a lease for 12 months, then the landlord is entitled the pursue you for the remainder of the rent should you move out early (i.e. if you're there 6 months, they can seek you to pay the remaining 6 months' rent). However, as already mentioned, if you find somebody (with whom the landlord is happy) to take over your lease, then the landlord has to return your deposit.

A lease is a legal contract so you are required to fulfill the terms, just as the landlord has to do. I'm pretty sure if they asked you to leave early and you were happy with the house, you'd be complaining about that. So it has to work both ways.

If the heating doesn't work in the house then you need to chat with the landlord about getting something done about it.

Ring threshold and seek their advice.

Victor

rullarn wrote: »

Downstairs we have to electric radiators, one works KINDA it's not heating anything up. The one in the kitchen is dead.
And the bathroom has no heating at all, when I lived there every morning I woke up with moist and damp on the window.

What heating is in the bedrooms?

Did you raise the heating as a problem with the landlord before you moved out?

Are there other problems that make it uninhabitable?

Is the property registered here? https://www.prtb.ie/public_registrations.aspx The Excel version might be the easiest to use.

www.threshold.ie

Jo King

Was the lease registered with the PRTB?

wyndham

Does he know where you work? If you are not interested in getting the deposit back, you could just leave. Put the keys through the letterbox and send a message that you are leaving.

Tell him you are returning to Sweden or whatever. Can't see him being bothered to try and pursue you. He would gain the deposit so would have a fully paid up month to find another tenant.

OS119

wyndham wrote: »

Does he know where you work? If you are not interested in getting the deposit back, you could just leave. Put the keys through the letterbox and send a message that you are leaving.

Tell him you are returning to Sweden or whatever. Can't see him being bothered to try and pursue you. He would gain the deposit so would have a fully paid up month to find another tenant.

that would be my view - he may have an option in law to chase you, but in reality it almost never happens, and its certainly not going to happen when there's no heating in the house and you've told him you're going back to Sweden.

if you can afford the loss of the deposit i'd just stop the direct debits/standing orders, post the keys back and not answer his calls. even if you can't afford to lose the deposit, if he knows the heating is shagged and is still saying you have to see out your tenancy, then he's the kind of LL who'll hang on to your deposit for grim death anyway. waste of time taking it further in my view.

in my experience, your bank will happily stop any direct debit/SO you ask them to stop, and they won't start it again till you give permission. the small print might say different, but you are the banks customer, not him - and you'll be the one they want to keep happy.

Osgoodisgood

wyndham wrote: »

Does he know where you work? If you are not interested in getting the deposit back, you could just leave. Put the keys through the letterbox and send a message that you are leaving.

If a landlord acted in such cavalier fashion in regard to a lease you'd be able to hear the squeals of "CALL THE PRTB" from Mars.

rullarn

We called PRTB,
And got this from them. He broke the law on three things,
first off, he didn't give us a copy of the contract/lease
he hasn't fixed any of the things we complained about
AND he has not registered us at PRTB that we are tenants so his not paying tax for us.
So we could just leave right away, and if he wanted to give us trouble, just direct him to PRTB
So i'm happy.

Thanks for all the help guys/and/or/girls

Osgoodisgood

I'm glad it's worked out well for you OP.
FWIW your ex landlord sounds like the lazy type who gives the decent ones a bad name. I hope your next one is an improvement!